Musicians rising to the challenge

6th Apr 2020

russell powell

Church music teams are finding new and creative ways to connect during the COVID-19 crisis, providing songs for online services with new techniques.

As Anglican churches all over Sydney go online, the incorporation of music is perhaps the greatest challenge. Some churches are directing members to playlists of Christian music, others have stripped back bands and others are using solo musicians delivering music unplugged.

Singer/Songwriter Rob Smith sang a solo version of two songs at St Andrew's Cathedral on Sunday, and the choir continued their series of socially distanced hymns.

At St Paul's, Carlingford, musicians (pictured above) tried a new technique, popular on You Tube, to record music. "In these times of social distancing we have been wrestling with how to do singing together," Carlingford's Sam Russell told the online congregation. "We want to keep lifting our voices and making a joyful noise to our heavenly Father....It's actually getting harder and harder to get a band together in the same space so what we have come up with is ways of recording ourselves on our own in our own homes and then bringing them together which is a little bit like what we're doing at church at the moment￼.." he said.

The first song of the new experiment was 'Be though my vision'.

What is your church doing with music during online services?

Sydneyanglicans.net is encouraging music teams to share clips and images of how they are managing with online services with the hashtag #churchreimagined on Instagram, Facebook and youtube.